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This story contains sensitive themes.

Her body is a foreign vessel. There’s not much inside her, but dragging her fingers over chain link or brick feels the same, no matter if she’s skinny or fat or angry or sad.

She knows to apply those words in hindsight from her expressions. Crying is sad; screaming is mad. Sometimes, sitting on the edge of her bed or curled on the floor beneath her desk, she lets her head float away from the world and snaps back hours later. She’s fine, really. Always fine. There’s no other word to describe the vast, neutral nothingness inside her except fine. It’s not empty, because empty implies a space left to be filled. It’s not lonely, nor wanting, nor happy, nor content.

It was fine, what they did to her. Not in an objective or rational way, but she feels fine about it now. It was fine, when law enforcement showed up at her house and told her mother about the photos. It was fine, when her mother told the rest of the family. It was fine, not to have autonomy: not when they hurt her; not years later, family whispering in pitied tones about the very worst moments of her life. It defines her. She lets it, because it’s fine, and because she doesn’t know how else she would even begin to define herself.

Every few months she drives out of town, blasting music so loud the bass drills into her bones and her ears ring when she cuts the engine. Always the same exit, always the same restaurant. She puts the gum there herself, chewing until her body vibrates with the pleasure of it. She knows it’s gross, objectively, but she doesn’t feel disgust when she pulls the wad from her mouth and stretches it between her fingers. It’s not always the same table. Not every slightly tacky, sticky lump came from her. But she finds a spot and presses there, leaving her fingerprints implanted in the rubber, smiling to herself.

Inside her a small spark rebels, but she keeps it mostly smothered, allowing nothing more than a steady stream of wisping smoke. She holds on to her disgusting little ritual, her objectively repulsive act: the smallest point of control she feels safe to hold.